The Delicious Way To Use Up All Your Spring Greens And Veggie Scraps
As a habitual farm box subscriber, unusual produce and endless zucchini don’t faze me. But for the longest time, I was stumped when it came to using the tender greens and assorted herbs that were a hallmark of early spring deliveries. Even after daily salads, I was left with heaps of young beet greens, sorrel, and garlic scapes. When a friend jokingly suggested I could at least make pesto if ever some basil appeared, I wondered: Why wait?
A traditional Genoese pesto is a blend of basil, salt, garlic, pine nuts, olive oil and Parmigiano-Reggiano, but I soon learned that there’s nothing wrong with deviating from the classic recipe. For instance, family food blogger Aimée Wimbush-Bourque adds asparagus and broccoli stems to her fresh pesto (and takes her low-waste approach even further by tossing leftover veggies into pasta). What did I have to lose by experimenting? My farm box pesto used all my excess herbs and greens and even things I normally composted (like carrot and radish tops). The resulting silky, luscious sauce was so good that I dunked bread crusts into the blender for mid-way taste tests.
Putting greens to good use isn’t just delicious. It’s also extremely thrifty. Joanne Gauci, Senior Policy Advisor with the National Zero Waste Council of Metro Vancouver, says: “Creatively using commonly wasted leftovers such as greens, end-of-jar oils, nuts, and other forgotten foods is a win for your wallet and a win in the fight against climate change. Canadian households lose an average of $1300 a year to avoidable food waste and by using up the food we’ve already paid for, we can save money and create delicious homemade versions of restaurant-style meals and specialty sauces, like pesto, that can be costly.”
If you’re eager to transform a stash of springtime greens, use this spring greens pesto recipe as a base for your culinary experiments. Pesto is as flexible as it is tasty!
Spring Greens Pesto Recipe
Ingredients
- 1/4 cup of roasted nuts. Almonds, walnuts, hazelnuts, pine nuts, and pistachios all work well.
- 2 cloves of garlic
- 3 cups of fresh greens, roughly chopped. Try a mix of herbs, beet greens, arugula, baby kale, sorrel, carrot tops, fennel fronds, garlic scapes, and radish leaves.
- 1/2 tsp salt
- Pinch of black pepper
- 1/2 cup olive oil or high-quality canola oil
- 1/4 cup grated hard cheese such as Parmigiano-Reggiano
Instructions
Blend all ingredients except the cheese until mostly smooth in a food processor, scraping down the sides as needed. Add in the Parmigiano-Reggiano for a final light blend. Pesto freezes beautifully in ice cube trays and muffin tins.
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Vanessa Chiasson is a freelance writer specializing in travel and human interest narratives, with bylines in Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, Reader’s Digest, and more.
